Joanne Berry jailed for using sex chatroom to find men to rape her ex work colleague

THIS is the colleague nobody wants. Clingy and emotionally demanding, Joanne Berry sent her work friend up to 12 texts a day before hatching an evil plot on an internet chat room.

Shoba Rao

News Corp AustraliaAugust 11, 20143:53pm

Behind bars ... Joanne Berry at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent where she was jailed for six years after she used sex chatrooms to try to trick strangers into raping a former work colleague. Picture: AAPSource:AAP

A WOMAN who concocted an evil revenge plot, which involved luring men from online sex chatrooms to rape her former work colleague has been jailed.

Joanne Berry, 30, from Grove Park, southeast London, was jailed for six years after it was revealed she developed an “irrational vendetta” against the victim who had only shown kindness towards her, the BBC reports.

Keen to get revenge upon her former colleague, Berry posed on internet sex chatrooms including ‘Cougar Shag’ as a woman who enjoyed sexual fantasies involving “rape scenarios”.

She then contacted a man known as “DH”, or Dean Hicks, who gave evidence during her trial.

After declaring her interest in role-play, she gave Hicks her former colleague’s home address instead of “her home” address, so he would arrive at the victim’s house.

Hicks was not aware of her cunning plan, in which she told him to knock on the victim’s door, then rape her, the Mirror reports.

At the time, Hicks went to the woman’s home, but soon realised he had been set up by Berry.

He then told the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to contact police.

The jury at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent had heard that the victim had been giving Berry emotional support, and received up to 12 text messages a day, the Mirror reports.

However, she became too demanding for the victim, who told Berry to stop contacting her.

A few days later, Hicks knocked on her door, thinking she was Berry.

In sentencing her to jail, Judge David Griffith-Jones QC said: “You underwent these offences in a wicked and calculated albeit frankly bizarre fashion. Your victim happened to be a work colleague.

“She had been kind to you when you confided in her about some personal matters and some hardships.

“Dr Hussain, a consultant psychiatrist, decided you were fragile and psychologically vulnerable with a low self-esteem, but that you had no mental illness and no psychiatric history.

“It is to be noted that the word ‘bizarre’ features regularly in my sentencing. It is highly unlikely that the counsel had anything like this in mind when they wrote the guidelines.

“By the seriousness of these offences taking account the totality of the criminality, I impose the shortest sentence I feel I possibly can. That sentence is a sentence of six years imprisonment.”

The judge added that the fact the victim was not raped was “entirely fortuitous”.

“That (the victim) was not in fact raped or seriously sexually assaulted is entirely fortuitous,” he said.

Berry, an office temp worker, was arrested at her home in Grove Park, south-east London on May 27, 2012.

On May 14 this year, Berry was convicted with putting the victim in fear of violence, committing an offence of assault with the intent of committing a relevant sexual offence, the common assault of the victim and attempting to cause the victim to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.

She will be on the sex offenders register and is also banned from working with children.